Elsa has always been organized. Ask anyone. So it didn't take her long to discover that she suddenly wasn't able to make rent because her boyfriend was stealing from her bank account. Now Elsa and her daughters are facing his betrayal and an eviction. Join BHPCL as we work to prevent her eviction and give Elsa's family space to heal.

Elsa belongs in Bayview. 15 years ago, Elsa moved to the neighborhood because she loved the community. She wanted to be a part of it. She immediately began working for a local nonprofit and eventually rose to the top of the executive team. Elsa was organized, forward thinking, and developed meaningful relationships with her clients. It wasn’t long before Bayview became her home.

Over the years that followed, she became a mother to two lovely girls. She worked hard to raise them as a single mother on a nonprofit salary. 5 years ago, she thought she had found a wonderful man to become their father. Devon was smart and funny. She loved how attentive he was.

But two years later, their relationship took a turn for the worse. Devon became irritable and secretive. Soon his irritation turned violent, leaving Elsa and her daughters unsafe in their own home.

Then, one day, Elsa noticed that there were holes in her balance sheets that she couldn’t explain. She suddenly didn’t have the money she needed to pay her rent or her bills. As she searched for an answer, the bills began to pile up.

In September of 2016, she discovered that Devon was stealing from her bank account. Elsa was outraged. After all that they had been through, this was the final straw. She sent Devon packing and tried to rearrange her life.

By the spring, Elsa was sure that she had made the majority of the payments that she had missed while Devon was stealing from her. On April 1st, however, she came home to find an eviction notice taped to her door.

Elsa went to the landlord and requested an explanation. As it turned out, he had doubled her rent while Devon was stealing from her. She was twice as far behind as she had thought. Elsa didn’t know, because her mailbox had been broken for two years. She had asked the landlord to fix the mailbox and to send her mail to her mother’s home. The landlord neglected to do either. As a result, Elsa suddenly owed $15,000 in back rent.

Elsa couldn’t believe it. An eviction would leave her and her daughters homeless and with an eviction on their record for 7 years. It would be almost impossible for them to find new housing. Elsa was sure there was another way. How could she be punished so severely for something she didn’t know about?

A long time friend of Open Door Legal, Elsa requested to meet with our housing attorney to look for another alternative. Our housing team is now working with Elsa to remove her back rent and save her from eviction. With your help, Elsa and her daughters can focus on healing from their traumatic relationship with Devon rather than trying to survive a housing crisis.

Philip Green

Belinda Liu

Sil Liapis

Elder Law Attorney

(415) 610-5991
sil@opendoorlegal.org

Hannah Wischnia

Engagement Associate

(415) 906-0578
hannah@opendoorlegal.org

Client Confidentiality

As a legal aid provider, we are bound to strict ethical obligations regarding client confidentiality. We are not allowed to disclose any information learned in the course of representation, or while the client was seeking out services, without their express permission.

All clients displayed on our site gave their informed, written consent to be displayed.

The names of our clients and of adverse parties are changed in our stories to maintain their anonymity. We do not want adverse parties to retaliate against them. The images used in our stories may or not may be the likeness of the described client. All other information in our stories, including the type and dates of actions and life histories of our clients, are accurate.

Clients may or may not be available to meet with donors. It is often harmful to our clients to meet with donors during the pendency of a case. After the case is over, we provide forums where former clients and donors can meet. A client's participation in these events is entirely voluntary.

Thank you for your help creating a safe space where all our clients feel welcome.

Our Story

Our organization started when we realized that it was in fact possible to ensure universal access to civil representation for everyone. For years, we had watched existing legal aid nonprofits turn away more people than they helped. We had seen the government grossly underfund legal aid and attach ever-more restrictions on who could be helped. We had witnessed the private sector invest atrociously little of its accumulated wealth into legal aid.

The result of this is predictable: legal aid has become the least resourced social need in the United States. Most low and moderate-income Americans can’t get help, and as a result can’t properly enforce their rights.

We realized that by combining program innovations, new strategies for generating earned income, and a focus on fundraising from the general public we could create a system that solved this massive problem and guaranteed access to legal representation for everyone in a community, on every issue.

We decided to prototype this system in Bayview/Hunters Point because it was the only high-need neighborhood of San Francisco without a legal aid office in the neighborhood. In late 2012 we raised about $8,000 in seed funding from some generous private donors and decided to put our theories to the test.

We opened our doors on January 7th, 2013. In our first year, our core staff worked tirelessly on minimum wage to deliver services to dozens of clients. The heating in the office didn’t work, the furniture was rotten, and we couldn’t afford a receptionist. We had to scrounge office supplies and equipment from people we knew.

But we proved that our model could work. We never turned away someone for services who lived in the local community, and by rigorously tracking our outcomes we were able to get more and more support from people that hadn’t funded legal aid before. We tripled our budget between our first and second year and tripled it again in our third year.

We’ve come a long way since the days when we had to hand shred everything because we couldn’t afford a shredder. We’re excited by what the future can bring and look forward to growing our model out to encompass more and more people.

Our Board of Directors

We are proud to have a diverse board featuring local residents and professionals from a variety of different industries. The board is in charge of implementing the member-approved annual budget and overseeing our staff.